Rural areas also tend not to be great places for LGBT people, either.

That may be true in some areas. I can only speak anecdotally. I brought a couple members of the LGBT community with me to a very rural area that is about as cowboy-midwest as it gets. Everyone has been very civil and even the "Good ol boys" have been very respectful with them to my pleasant surprise. There are plenty of openly LGBT working in the local stores.

All of that said I have advised them against hanging out in the local bars after listening to the scanner a bit. There are a few regular angry drunks. Perhaps I am too overly cautious.

Speaking from experience, they're going to be on good behavior around you and others. It's what happens when they think no one will notice or no one will hold them to account when real discrimination occurs.

I've met plenty of people who claim to be LGBT supporters in public, but have no problem harassing LGBT people, discriminating against them and calling them slurs when they think no one else is looking. Same thing goes for people in power, like bosses and owners, or police and judges. Discrimination doesn't always look like American History X or the Westboro Baptist Church, the vast majority of it is low key and insidious.

That's the very reason I suggested staying away from the bars. When people are drunk their inhibitions are gone and judgement is very poor. The LGBT hate crime that I know of happened about 23 years ago outside a bar.

People who pick just what’s attractive at the moment are pretty short-sighted and I have no sympathy for them.

What's attractive and what's viable are often two separate things. NYC is not viable for someone making $40k a year, but neither is moving to the Rust Belt where their "options" are working part-time in department stores or literal crime.

Something tells me that this is a situation that can't be won in some people's minds. If someone makes the rational decision to not move somewhere that is not economically viable, in an area that's projected to become even more unviable with time, that's not good enough for some. If someone lives in a shitty area and moves elsewhere for better career prospects, but still can't make ends meet, well, according to posts like this, they should just have moved somewhere shitty instead.

If we applied the same to degrees, I doubt you'd feel the same about all of the "short-sighted" people who chose to study trades or liberal arts at a state school and now have poor economic prospects, instead of choosing what's attractive at the moment like STEM.

Remote work would also have a cascading effect. Say 20 people move to a rural area, well they need food, and their vehicles fixed, and their house maintained, etc. They need to fund their hobbies and generally would bring more money to those areas. Big cities with a lot of power don't want that to happen because they will lose their tax base. I suspect some city governments are incentivizing businesses to bring employees back to the office because of this.

People who chose to study trades would be doing well off, that’s a terrible analogy.

> liberal arts

Liberal arts has pretty much always had terrible prospects. That’s not short sighted, that’s just straight up blind.

In the last year or two a locally-famous lighthouse went up for sale and was bought for cash by some guy from silicon valley. Instead of being turned into an attraction, or a house, or hell even an Airbnb spot, it remains untouched much to the chagrin of the locals. I guess the new owner can't be bothered to come out here and just liked the idea of bragging that he owned it.

Every time the Midwest comes up on this site, you get these laughably stupid takes that it's some bombed-out shithole with no jobs other than crime, and where people kill minorities on sight. At least once every couple weeks, there will be a decently sized comment thread about how it's economically desolate and morally evil, and that no sane person would ever move here.

My only response to that is please don't ever stop believing that. Stay away. Don't come crush the housing market with your $200k+ FAANG salary so you can tut-tut the people that live here about how racist, sexist, classist, etc. they are despite having never actually talked to one of them in your life. For those that got dealt a bad hand in life, there is at least a chance for them in the Midwest. If keeping that chance alive means that somebody living in a coastal city thinks my community is human garbage, so be it.

It isn't as diverse as some other parts of the country, but there's groups of people from all over the world. Within a 2 hour drive from me, you'll find enclaves from Korea, Vietnam, Somalia, Mexico and others.

I know an Englishman who lives in an Indonesian village (not an enclave). He is constantly reminded that while his presence is cherished, he isn't, and never will be "one of them." He still loves it, though, so there's that.

What on earth makes you think they are second class citizens? They vote, attend school board meetings, own homes and live just like anyone else.

In my neighborhood I would say at minimum 25% of the home owners are non-white families, if not more.

Bunch of representative bias anecdotes, mostly be people who don’t live there, or haven’t in 20 years.

And yet, if the same environment were to be encountered in another country, it would be “culture”.

There's a few islands of sanity here in the midwest, primarily around college towns. But... prices have doubled since 2016, at least in my area.

We're closing on a house. $375k. I'm one of the lucky ones. Like, super lucky. But it sold back in 2016 for $170k.

For all the cultural likes and dislikes, mass of people is generally moving when they have pragmatic reason to do so.